Chapter 19
Arley Santee was still drunk, maybe drunker; he'd been through two pint mason jars of volatile corn liquor, but Heather couldn't see any appreciable change in him since the afternoon. He hadn't stumbled on the path, and he wasn't a bit careless with his rifle. The dog hung back as he ordered, too, padding guard behind them, a terrible sentry in the humid night.
The carbide lamp wobbled on his head as he sat down on the river bank and turned his face toward the water. He wasn't worried about Grady Cordell because one end of the rope that passed around Grady's ankles was tucked into Arley's overalls. If Grady moved quickly, Arley could simply jerk his feet out from under him.
Where could a blinded, handcuffed man run to, Heather thought. Arley had only hauled him down here to further torture him, to belittle and degrade him-as he had done to Heather and to Honey. Remembering, she rubbed her hand across her mouth and grimaced. No man should force that kind of thing upon a woman, not even a man so lacking in all the human mercies as Arley Santee.
"Lawman," Arley said, "if you had your eyes back, you'd of seen that big ol' loggerhead slippin' his eye under the water yonder. Biggest son of a bitch turtle I ever seen on this river, and I 'spect I'll bust him one-if I got me the time, after Artis gets back with all that money. Might be busy, though; might be makin' the widder there go get me her money she has to sign for, might be makin' her suck me off some more, like she done back at the house. You like listenin' to that, Grady."
"No," Grady said.
Arley moved his head, moved the spotlight of the lamp across the river surface. Watching, Heather made out a stump, a log hung up on the far bank, and a short forest of cypress trees growing out of the night black water near this shore. Would the man actually make Grady go into that river, where there was so much chance of him drowning? She hoped not; she prayed not.
"Reckon you didn't," Arley said, and Heather caught the gleam of the fruit jar as he drank from it again. "Reckon when you go to swap slobbers with her again, you'll recollect how she sucked a cunt and my pecker, too. Can't never trust these city women, Grady; they ain't decent, honest country folks like you 'n me."
His giggle was obscene, a half-mad sniggering that frightened Heather silly. When it died, Arley said, "Around to the right, and out yonder some, there's a water oak blowed over next to the bank. Them roots makes a good hidey hole for mudcats, most nights. Reckon you can scrabble one good as me?"
"Guess so," Grady said. "Man don't need his eyes to feel under roots."
"Man needs his feet, though. Couple of dropoffs out yonder, too. You fall in one of 'em, I might not be able to haul you back with this here string, seein' as how you won't be doin' much swimmin' in your handcuffs."
Heather said, "Arley . . . "
And he said, "Shut up, woman. Your mouth's best used for suckin' cocks."
Face flaming, grateful for the cover of darkness, Heather sank back. There was no use in even attempting to reason with the man, he was going to do just as he wanted. Here among the three others, he was the kingpin, the boss man, the emperor; his word was law, and his punishment swift and perverted. That's why he had Grady down here on the blackly flowing river, to punish him for screwing Heather. He had already doled out chastisement for Heather on the same charges.
Arley said, "I got the rope on you, Grady. Just ease on out there and bring us back some mudcat for breakfast. If you can scrabble a stall."
Grady stood up, a big shadow in the white flicker of the headlamp, and Heather caught her breath, not wanting to see him risk his life on Arley's evil whim.
No more than she had wanted to take his penis into her lips, back there at the shack. She couldn't back away now, and she couldn't then. He had her head pinned between his cruel hands, and when he shoved his pale-haired belly forward, the swollen, purplish head prodded her lips and she had to open them or have her skull crushed in his grip.
His penis slipped into her spread lips, passed softly scraping over her bottom teeth, and Heather had shivered like a young tree in a high wind. Fighting the impulse to upchuck, she had steeled her body to accept whatever indignity he could pile upon it-or into it. And when his prick slid over the roof of her mouth and moved to touch the velvet cup of her throat, she had managed to take it without becoming violently ill.
"Step right on out in the water," Arley called to Grady. "Might be you'll stomp on that big ol' turtle, and he'll snap off a leg."
The bastard, she thought, mind unflinching at the curse, for it fit him. He'd worked his penis in and out of her lax mouth, snarling instructions as to what she was supposed to do with her tongue, and she had obeyed, trying to get it over and done with.
"That's the way," Arley said. "If you miss that drop-off, you can turn to the right and feel along them roots. Might not be a water moccasin in 'em tonight; was the other night, though."
She couldn't have done it without the thing that Honey was doing to her at the same time. Kneeling over her sister's face, Heather felt the quick, hot darting of the girl's tongue, and knew the caress of her lips. By concentrating upon her own excitement, she could continue to work upon Arley's lunging cock, using her tongue and teeth, sucking with lips until her cheeks dipped in, pulling upon his penis head while he groaned and bucked in the chair.
"Swim on off, if you can," Arley said. "See can you out-pull me on this rope."
Honey had probed swiftly into Heather's vagina, reaching full length with her tongue, stroking it around and about inside as her lips nibbled at the labia and her fingers teased lightly over the cheeks of Heather's ass and down through the crack.
Heather pulled on Arley's cock, sucked it and laved it with her tongue, tasting the saltiness of its head and the oozing seminal fluid, knowing the hairy thrust as his pelvis came against her lips, as his balls swung rhythmically to her chin.
"That's the place," Arley called. "Right in them roots and on back in the mud bank. If you lucky, there's a big old cat up under there, but if you ain't-maybe you can snatch out a conger eel afore he eats your thumb clean off."
She couldn't help squirming on Honey's face; the sensation was different from when Grady had used his mouth on her, for a woman seemed to know all the nooks and crannies of eroticism. Her sister ate her cunt with delicacy, with a sensuous concentration that made Heather go wild. In turn, she sucked madly upon Arley's slippery prick, so that when it swelled its head and prepared to ejaculate, she was caught by surprise.
Arley's breath hissed between his teeth and the carbide lamp held its bright spot upon the head and shoulders of Grady Cordell as the deputy dipped his cuffed hands beneath the black surface of the river.
Heather remembered that he had hissed just that way when he started to come in her mouth, and she couldn't get away from it. He clamped her head savagely in his hands and stroked his spitting cock far back into her throat. The hot semen geysered into her throat, against the roof of her mouth, over her tongue. Arley hissed and churned his ass, half-lifting from the chair to feed his flood of juice into her face.
"Got him," Grady said exultantly, and Heather stared to see him lift dripping from the water with a big fish thrashing violently from his doubled fists. Spray flew and Grady turned to wade back to shore, water pouring off him, off the catfish he held.
If she hadn't swallowed the stuff, she could have choked on it. And just about that moment, Honey's tingling suction got to Heather, too. Her entire being suffused with a glow of ecstasy, and when Arley drew his wet penis from her mouth, Heather trembled in an exquisite orgasm brought on by her sister's hungry teeth and tongue.
"Bring him on in," Arley ordered. "I just as soon keep you on my string, anyhow, leastways 'til Artis gets home, case I have to trade your worthless ass for him. Then I'll think of some-thin' to do with you, Grady; I'll think hard on it and come up with somethin' real, real good."
When Grady stumbled on the steep river bank, Heather moved to help him, but Arley shoved her back. "Tote the fish on home, boy; you a big, strong policeman, so you can make it all right by yourself."
They trooped back for the house, Grady moving ahead in the dark, with the big hound ranging ahead of him, crisscrossing the trail from side to side and keeping an eye on him. Then Heather and Honey came next, closer now than they had been in their lives, and after them prowled Arley Santee and his rifle. Because the light was behind the others, they moved clumsily, following Grady's lead. Heather sighed with relief when they reached the bare yard, because she knew that snakes hunted at night, and any of them could have stepped on one.
She only wished they could step on Arley Santee as well, and break his back like the reptile he was. Somehow, by some stroke of good fortune, they would soon have to try it. The man's absent brother couldn't be gone much longer, and when he came back, the odds would be astronomical against any kind of escape. Another gun, another carbon copy of Arley-it would bar them from any lingering hope they might still have.
Another gun, she thought, and wondered where Arley had hidden the pistol he'd taken from Grady. A pistol wouldn't be so difficult to work; just point it and pull the trigger. But Arley had tucked it out of sight somewhere in the cabin, and it might not be all that hard to find. She'd look, Heather decided; every chance now, she would search for that other gun.
"Take care of that fish," Arley said to her. "You know how."
She took the catfish from Grady and saw that he'd killed it, for which she was thankful. She got the fire going under the pot and waited for it to heat the water. Looking over at the porch, she saw Grady being chained to his post once more, and her heart sank. Heather didn't think she could just shoot Arley outright-even though he was a confessed murderer and a perverted rapist, and a kidnapper, too. She would need Grady's help.
But Grady was blind, and handcuffed to the post.
When she was done with the catfish, she carried it into the house and placed it in the pan of water with baking soda in it. She poked through a table drawer and looked behind the wood box, but the missing pistol wasn't in either place.
Arley came up behind her and she flinched. The coal oil lamp was burning on the kitchen table, throwing its soft light over the shack's interior, and the heat of the day had abated somewhat. It should have been a time for resting, for gentleness, but not with Arley Santee standing so near.
"M-more whiskey?" she asked. "I see some jars over there."
He put both arms around her waist and reached up to cup his hands over her breasts, pulling her back into his body. Heather felt his stiff penis shoving against her buttocks. He said, "You suck a man's pecker real good, woman. Makes me think what else you can do, besides use your pussy like a fresh-fucked mink."
"I don't understand," she said.
"You ever been corn-holed?" he asked, rubbing his hard into the crack of her tail.
"You-you mean back there? No, of course not, that's depraved! You don't mean to-to . . . . "
Heather bit off her words, knowing by now that begging this animal, pleading with him, only whetted his appetite for the sadistic. But her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands as she considered his latest deviation, and rejected it for the vile thing it was. Maybe he was only tormenting her, threatening her with an act that he knew would be unacceptable to her.
But he meant it. She knew that as he kept pushing the length of his rod against her cheeks, as he continued to fondle her breasts.
"Won't hurt none if you don't fight it," Arley said into the back of her neck. "I corn-holed three, four boys when I was young, and it didn't tear 'em up none. Might be we could grease my pecker and help it slide right on up your ass. Thing is, you can loosen up your hole or tighten it-and if it's tight, it's goin' to hurt."
"Let me do something else," she suggested. "Let me do something to Honey while she gives you a good time."
He ran one hand down from her breasts and pushed the fingers between her thighs, wiggling the middle one up against her labia. "Thought I'd let sis get her nuts off with your boyfriend-seein' as how you sneaked and fucked him. Could be he'll like her little pussy better'n yours."
"All right," she said, feeling beaten again. "All right, Arley, anything you say."
He giggled against her ear and squeezed her mound, squeezed her tit. "I say we go on out yonder and watch sis get Grady's dick up."